With the distinctly theological character of the excellent and interesting work written by Canon Champneys, we are unable to deal at large in a secular and philanthropic review. The object of the writer is to prove or illustrate by facts the essential adaptation of Christianity to every phase of the human mind the humblest and the lowest, as well as the highest, the grandest, or the most delicate in organization. Amongst Christians there is no monopoly of talent, no necessary transmission of genius. The magnificent ritual of Judaism has passed away. What the science of Newton could test, what the metaphysical skill of Locke could analyse, what the intuitive talent of Chalmers could unfold, is of a simplicity so remarkable as to commend itself to the poorest cottager, and to elevate and refine the most lowly of the earth. We need not invent for the lower classes any elaborate scheme of choice self-culture or social development; we need not teach them to follow any ignis fatuus to their ruin; we need not attempt to reconstruct, on shallow theories of our own, the amiable instincts of mankind. The Book and the simple teaching of Christianity are sufficiently powerful. Facts such as these before us are quoted to illustrate its reality.

There is nothing artificial and nothing overstrained in the simple narratives related. They are stories of everyday life, and some of them may be called accounts of commonplace people. Here are men and women to be met with, day by day, in the busy world of London, or in the less active civilization of the provinces. Here are eyes made keen and faces sharpened in the struggle for bread. Here are men of blunt, untutored susceptibilities, aroused into earnest, self-scrutinizing life. Here is the lad, vacillating and uncertain in purpose, thinking and debating on important questions in sickness, but careless and forgetful in health. Even he is reached by the power of truth, and his wavering nature has strength to conquer a new happiness. Here is the violent-tempered woman, with strongly marked features the virago and terror of the neighbourhood, who learns at last to throw her natural energy into better matters, and is night after night to be seen at the church prayers, when the rain is dashing in torrents against the windows, with her drenched umbrella by her side, and firm determination expressed in the lines of her face. Here is the noble-looking man, with power for better things, submitting day after day to the intoxicating effect of burning spirits, or drugged, adulterated beer, who has dragged his sons into his sin, and may not save them by his subsequent bitter repentance.

Here are two sisters, born in a better position of life, but choosing in peculiar circumstances to have recourse to hard, poorly-paid,

poorly-paid, bread-getting work, finding their only comfort in steady, habitual, persevering occupation. Some secret cause had driven these young women into voluntary poverty, to bear its deprivations with patience, and to sustain themselves by earnest industry. Here is a hard-working mother forced to labour in poverty to contribute towards the support of her children, but amply compensated by the bright and artless looks of the little ones who have turned the gloomy court and the ugly dilapidated dwelling into a paradise for her. Her love is without bounds for those who are powerless to requite the depth of her affection, and the hardest pang she is called upon to endure is in the hour of her death, when this tender heart is forced to separate itself from the helpless clinging children confided to her care. Faith and disinterested love triumph even here.

Here is the Ragged School thronged with dirty, uncombed, and untamed children, who have been taken from the haunts of vice, where the most virulent moral poisons are actively working, to be moulded into useful members of society; and here a wonderful and gradual transformation is effected, from wild, hunger-driven animals into sane, responsible, and thinking creatures. Here is a Night Refuge for outcast penniless boys-the nucleus of a future scheme of unbounded usefulness-established at first simply because a wise and single-minded old lady, who had ceased to wear jewels in the decline of life, when they outshone her eyes, sent her diamond ring to be sold for the benefit of the ragged children. May others copy the example! Watches,' as the author observes, are not the only important pieces of machinery which have been made to go upon a diamond.' But workers for the public good do not need to be reminded that there are gifts to be dedicated to the cause of social advancement and earnest Christianity more priceless than diamonds. Let not such be daunted by straitened means. The great men of antiquity did not despise poverty; but the tendency to overvalue material advantages is the rock upon which the bestintentioned members of society are very apt to split in our day. 'Retrenchment of the useless,' wrote a celebrated French orator, the want even of the relatively necessary, is the highroad to Christian self-denial, as well as to antique strength of character.' The man who is devoted to the good of his fellowcreatures, whose great heart may be gratified in a little house, whose cleverness is not merely studied for his own advantage, whose benevolence is never hollow, but who is eager to instil into the souls of others his own spirit of devotion and earnest courage that man stands, in a measure, removed from the material

material reverses which may affect the happiness of others. Amidst the detractions and vexations around him, his name will but shine with a purer lustre. For a while he may apparently be conquered, but he is never actually overcome.

ART. IV.-FATHER MATHEW.

T is certainly strange that none of the able and sympa

his great enterprize have preserved, or have collected and given to the public, a sufficient biography of the great Irish patriot. No man's life was better worth writing, no man had friends more capable for the task.' It is from an article forming part of the third volume of 'Meliora,' that we draw the above quotation. The neglect there regretted has been recently atoned for by Mr. John Francis Maguire.* In research, in selection, in compilation, in disquisition, Mr. Maguire has laboriously executed his task, and, on the whole, with a success for which we cannot but feel grateful. His style is often mere parliamentary English-verbose, puffy, and circumlocutory. But such faults of manner are easily pardonable in one who supplies so much excellent matter.

Of Father Mathew's labours, a succinct, and yet, for general purposes, a sufficiently copious account, was given in the article in our third volume, to which we have already referred. To those, however, who never had the happiness of personally knowing Theobald Mathew, much has been wanting until now, to explain the relationship between what he did and what he was; to account for the success of the Apostle of Temperance' by anything in the quality and character of the man. Mr. Maguire now brings the man himself before us; and the discovery thus made is to ourselves so delightful that we feel almost irresistibly impelled to offer some glimpses of it to those of our readers who may not have met with Mr. Maguire's volume.

From his infancy there was, we are told, an unusual sweetness about Theobald Mathew. Of all her twelve good-looking children, this fine, sturdy, handsome boy, so engaging and kindly, was the one whom his mother loved the best. Though gay, and cheerful, and no coward, he was rather repelled by

Father Mathew: A Biography.' By John Francis Maguire, M.P., author of Rome, its Rules, and its Institutions.' London: Longmans, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Co.

the

the rude games of his brothers and their playfellows; and whilst they were away on some sportive enterprize, was apt, when a child, to be found closely attending on his mother, artlessly prattling his love to her, or clinging to the skirt of her dress, and looking up into her face with sweet innocent glance, through lovely eyes of limpid blue. This strong attachment to his mother, which peculiarly influenced his after life, filling him with reverence for all good and holy women, was not the weakness of one more than usually dependent on maternal care; it was a special strength of affection by which he was differenced from the rest; it was one fruit of a superiority of nature, giving him, from an early age, and to the end of their lives, such an influence over his brothers as they never tried to resist or dispute. To a gentleness and goodness distinguishing him from other boys, he added, it seems, a sweet gravity, even a dignity of manner most remarkable in a child. Yet a smile was ever apt to be dancing about his mouth, and was easily enlarged into hearty laughter upon ludicrous cause given. Never was the advantage obtained by his superior grasp upon his mother's love abused for any selfish ends; on the contrary, it was apt to be made the means of winning some little feast, of which he became the happy dispenser, delighting to surprise his brothers on their return home, rosy with health and exercise, and with the appetites of young wolves.' To obtain thus the means of banquetting his brothers, was a kind of passion with this child. Being a boy he was, of course, fond of eating dainties, but, being this boy, he was still fonder of bestowing. And whilst loving thus to make glad his young companions, whom as if by natural lordliness he led, they yielding to and obeying him as a matter of course, his tenderness of heart rested not at the boundary of human kind, but, going forth in earnest protest against all cruel sports, suffered him to be no party to inflicting pain on any living thing. His constant impulse was to succour and befriend alike the human creation and the brute. A harsh or unkind expression from his lips no one can remember. A word of dubious propriety was never adopted by this glorious boy. In this respect, as in many others, the. child not only was, but was evidently and conspicuously, the father of the man.

As years revolved, his love of order, his neatness of attire, continued to develope side by side with the large beneficence of which we shall speak presently. By young and old, as he was more known, he was more and still more admired and beloved. A boy, and with a boy's wilfulness, he was; but with a nature so

sweet

sweet and gentle, and yet courageous; so fit and ready to lead, but always with a generous purpose; so kindly ingenious in giving joy to others; that whilst his brothers could not help looking up to and obeying him, the servants almost adored him, and the poor were never tired of invoking blessings on the head of their young 'born saint.' To many he must have seemed almost as if he were some young burgess of the skies, elected by a heavenly constituency to represent them in this mundane parliament. And being a member of a devout Catholic' family, he was, of course, from an early period marked out by common consent as born to be a priest. One of his elder brothers, George, had at first been designated by his pious mother for the priestly office, and had actually been presented by some relative with a costly suit of vestments and a valuable chalice, with that end in view. But George, as he grew older, outgrew the flecting whim he had at one time manifested; and one day, whilst all were seated round the spacious dinner table, the good mother, surveying her troop of handsome, healthy boys, exclaimed, 'I am unfortunate! Nine sons, and not one of them to be a priest!' The boys glanced at George, but his dissentient eyes were fixed steadily upon his plate. Then it was that Theobald started up, and cried out with a voice full of emotion, Mother, don't be uneasy; I will be a priest.' The lady, with kisses and blessings, folded to her arms her self-dedicated lad; and from that moment Theobald Mathew was regarded by his mother even as Samuel was from the first by Hannah.

In after years, as a Capuchin friar, it was in the humble but onerous function of the confessional that Father Mathew began to distinguish himself. The poor of Kilkenny were the first to find out his worth; and their lavish praise of the new director' attracted to him others of a different class, with whom the young priest became an object of the deepest interest, and even veneration. 'Young as he was in years, and younger still in experience of the world,' says Mr. Maguire, his advice, even in matters not altogether strictly within the province of a clergyman, was eagerly sought for by many whose hair was streaked by the silver of age. Nor was

his advice without its value; for, to an instinctive uprightness and a stern sense of justice, he united great_natural shrewdness and sagacity, with clearness and soundness of judgment.'

In Cork, whither he soon removed from Kilkenny, the young priest was for a time rarely to be met with beyond the precincts of his little chapel, and could with difficulty be drawn from the retirement of the wretched apartment, between

salt-houses